(System) How this site is built
System.
Every value is a decision made once.
This site runs on one set of rules: a palette worked out from seven inputs, one tempo for motion, type and radii named by role. Change an input and everything built on it follows. This page is built from the tokens it describes, so the knobs below are real.
(00) Why
Define the rules once. Derive everything else.
Craft does not come from polishing screens one at a time. It comes from a foundation where every value is derived from a few named inputs and the browser does the work: a palette from seven numbers, sizes from a closed scale, motion from one tempo, shapes from roles. Nothing is picked by hand, so nothing drifts. The same rules fit a marketing site, a product or a native app, and they fit a brand that already exists: the formula reproduced an existing palette within ΔE 1.2 without changing its look.
-
Derive
Inputs, not values
A color is a step on a ladder. A size is a step on a scale. A duration is a tier. Change an input and everything built on it follows, and the relationships that carry contrast and rhythm survive the change.
-
Name
Every step has a job
Tokens are named for what they do, not what they are: ink, line, control, card, hover, layout. There is no token for an off-scale value, so using one takes a reason.
-
Enforce
Rules that check themselves
A rule that lives only in a document is a suggestion. Here the contrast floors run as a script, screenshots are diffed across every app, and a test watches that content never animates twice.
-
Proof
One method, many products
Seventeen prototypes run on one kit built this way, and the same method now underlies more than a dozen product and client sites, each keeping its own look. The reusable parts are open source: the palette formula, the motion tiers, the multi-app consolidation and the regression pass, written as skills any agent can run.
(01) Color
Seven inputs drive every color.
No neutral is picked by hand. Each theme sets seven inputs: a hue for everything; paper, depth and tint for grounds and lines; ink, ink step and ink tint for text. Each neutral is a step on a ladder: the paper lightness, plus the depth times that step, in OKLCH. The ladder stays fixed and the inputs move. Every step moves with them, so the gaps between steps, which is where contrast lives, survive any retint.
/* a ground, a card, a hairline */
L = paper + depth × step C = tint H = hue
/* a line of text */
L = ink-l + ink-step × step C = ink-tint H = hueThe audit, live
CSS cannot enforce a contrast floor, so a script does. It works out every text step against every ground and fails anything under 7:1. Here it runs as you tune: the worst case for each text step, on any ground.
(02) Motion
One tempo. Smaller things move faster.
Durations are a scale, not a number picked per component. The eye reads a shared tempo as one site. Entrances ease out, exits ease in and run a tier shorter. A press answers at once; a device turning into frame takes its time.
Easing
The handoff
When two things trade places, the outgoing one leaves at once and the incoming one waits 50ms. They never overlap at full opacity, so a swap reads as one change. The tuner's Copy button trades its label this way.
(03) Radius
Radii are named by role, and nest.
A radius is named for the job it does, not its size: control for a button, card for a card, sheet for a floating panel, pill for anything fully round. When one shape sits inside another, the outer radius is the inner one plus the gap between them. Otherwise the corners pinch.
Roles
Concentric
(04) Type
Every size comes from a scale.
A fixed set of sizes, each named for its job, and a reason needed for anything off it. Small text holds still; headings scale with the screen between a floor and a ceiling. The three biggest each set one line: the hero, a project title, the preloader count. Fraunces sets display, Archivo sets reading and Fragment Mono sets labels.
(05) Controls
A control is measured, not styled.
A button's height is a token, and its padding and icon follow from its size. A field's edge is its own color, held at 3:1 against the ground, because the hairlines between surfaces are deliberately too light to mark a control. Anything you can tap is at least 44 pixels tall. Focus is one rule in three cases: a ring on a control that has a border, the browser's outline on one that does not, and nothing on a row inside a list, where the highlight already answers.
-
Height
Five sizes, one token each
Each size of button and field reads its height from a token. A suite overrides the tokens once and every control in it is re-measured, so six local copies of a button in one suite became one.
-
Edge
A boundary you can see
A field, a checkbox and the off state of a switch draw their edge in a color that clears 3:1 on any ground, while the lines between surfaces stay faint. Both are tokens, so neither borrows the other.
-
Focus
Visible on the keyboard, quiet on the mouse
On this site, keyboard focus is a two pixel accent outline set four pixels off the edge, and the mouse never sees it. In the products the ring is a shadow, so it needs no border and shifts no layout, and it never carries an offset, because an offset is painted and would have to guess the surface beneath it.
(06) Icons
Icons are drawn on the grid they sit in.
Each icon on this site is a hand-drawn line on a square grid: 12 for an arrow beside text, 16 for the theme toggle, 20 for the tuner's button, 24 for a glyph that trades places. The stroke is set per grid so every glyph lands near the same weight on screen, with round caps and joins. The color is whatever the text around it is, so an icon takes every ink step and both themes for free. In the products the glyphs are Lucide, sized by the control they sit in: a small button gets a 14 pixel icon, a medium one 16. When two icons trade, they use the handoff shown under Motion.
Shown at three times their size
(07) Hover
Small motion does a lot.
Hovers move on the same tiers as everything else. A work row fills its ground while the name slides and turns italic; a link's arrow steps toward where it goes; a button warms to the accent. These are the site's own components, not copies. Point at them.
(08) Verify
A rule that is not checked is a wish.
Every rule on this page has a check that can fail, and the checks run before a change ships.
-
Contrast
Every text step on every ground
A script works out each text color against each ground and fails anything under 7:1, and each control edge under 3:1. It runs live under Color as you tune. Across the products it found failing greys in more than half the apps, each fixed by moving an input, not a value.
-
Screens
Before and after, every page
Playwright photographs every page and every case study stage, and a change is read as a ranked list of what moved. Noise is triaged from regressions before anything is merged.
-
Motion
Content never animates twice
A probe watches a page change and fails if anything that stayed in place plays its entrance again. Persistent content holds still; only what is new arrives.
(09) Stack
Each tool has one job.
No template. The pages are hand-written HTML and CSS, enhanced with TypeScript; the products inside them are React. A tool earns its place by doing one job the platform cannot, and it loads only where that job happens.
-
Type
Fraunces, Archivo, Fragment Mono
Fraunces sets display. It is a variable serif with an optical size axis, so the name in the bar and a headline at full width each get letterforms drawn for their size. Archivo sets reading text. Fragment Mono sets labels, dates and anything technical. All three are self-hosted and preloaded, and the two big faces fall back to system fonts tuned to their metrics, so nothing jumps when they arrive.
-
Motion
GSAP
Runs the preloader, the hero's line reveals, the manifesto that scrubs with the scroll, and the cursor. It stays off the critical path: on a phone it loads once the page is idle. With reduced motion on, it never loads at all.
-
Scroll
Lenis
Smooths the wheel, so motion tied to the scroll reads as one continuous move instead of steps. Anchor links travel through it. Under reduced motion the page keeps native scrolling.
-
Atmosphere
Three.js
Draws the smoke behind the hero: one full-screen shader of warped noise that leans toward the pointer. It is the heaviest thing on the site, so it runs only on capable desktops and loads when the browser is idle. Everyone else gets a CSS gradient of the same ember. It pauses when the hero scrolls away, and it follows the light and dark theme.
-
Products
React and Tailwind CSS
The live products in the case studies are React, styled with Tailwind CSS v4 on a shared set of tokens. Each one loads only on the case study that shows it.
-
Build
Vite+
Builds the pages and hashes the assets. The site is vanilla TypeScript, because it is a document with motion, not an app.
See it in use
Selected work →